


Call Me Sunshine

by wormpng



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort, Crying, Fluff and Angst, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Panic Attacks, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:22:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25665088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wormpng/pseuds/wormpng
Summary: Their first night living together, Kas is overwhelmed with just how much he loves Julian. Through their life together, that doesn't change.
Relationships: Kas Khan/Julian Castellano, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Kudos: 3





	Call Me Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> these are cory's (@EUGHDAMNIT on twitter) OC's, i simply get fed up with sharing my drabbles through google docs

Their first night living together Julian wakes in the middle of the night to Kas crying. They had fallen asleep after unpacking their new bedroom, their limbs tangled and their foreheads touching, but at some point Kas had got up to use the bathroom and now Julian’s arms were empty. Wanting for the warmth Kas provided, he rolled over and reached out, finding Kas sitting up, on top of the covers. Hearing a soft sob, Julian sits up as well, wiping at his eyes groggily, willing the blurriness to fade from his vision.

“Kas? What’s wrong?” He asks, voice slurred and deepened with exhaustion, gently imploring for answers from his weeping lover. Kas turns to face him, beautiful dark eyes brimming with tears unshed, face pale and shiny with those he couldn’t contain. He searches Julian’s face for a moment before sighing deeply and leaning his head against the wall behind them.

“Nothing, really. I just-” His voice quivers and breaks, and he clears his throat before continuing. “I’ve been yearning for this,” He gestures between the two of them, “for so long and now I can’t even-” He closes his eyes tight as he breaks into a sob. Julian can’t help but think he’s beautiful, even in these broken moments, even when he cries. Something about the way his hair sticks to his cheeks, or the way his red nose wrinkles up, or the way the teardrops on his eyelashes catch the light so they reflect like stars. Julian reaches out his hand and finds one of Kas’. 

“Hey,” he starts gently, as Kas’ sobs turn to hiccups. “Take your time.” Kas’ hands are so much different than Julian’s. Where Julian’s are soft, smooth, barely callused at the fingertips from playing guitar for his siblings, Kas’ are rough, calluses on his palms from falling and scraping them learning to skateboard. Where Julian’s fingers are well kept, unmarred, Kas’ are picked at, nails chewed to the quick, hangnails pulled at and left bleeding. Julian smiles at how different they are, kisses Kas’ scarred knuckles.

“I’m not going anywhere, sunshine. Take all the time you need.”

***

The simple sentence nearly breaks Kas in two. From the moment Julian asked about the two moving into a place of their own his stomach has been in knots that seem to just keep twisting and turning and tying themselves tighter no matter how much Kas attempts to persuade them otherwise. It all happened so quickly in his mind; the idea, the apartment hunting, the packing up and moving twenty minutes away from their friends into a moderately shitty one bedroom apartment… Even though Kas knows that it was nearly a year of work it feels like it barely took a week.

Really, he never thought they would get this far. He had figured he’d have messed up horribly by now and Julian would have left him. But… no. Julian is still here. Right beside him, holding his hand, kissing his knuckles with soft lips, telling him everything would be okay in softer words. This is _real,_ and he seems to have to keep reminding himself of the fact. 

Kas never thought he’d get here, and now that he has, he doesn’t know how to put into words what he feels. That isn’t entirely true, actually; he feels scared still, nervous, not sure how long this will last. Mostly though, he feels happy. There is an overwhelming joy blossoming in his heart that he can’t describe with his words. There aren’t enough in the world to express the happiness and warmth and sense of _belonging_ he feels being in this shitty little apartment with the man he’s in love with. 

That’s okay though. They don’t need words anymore to know how much they love each other. It’s in the very fiber of their souls now. They know it in the way their bodies naturally want to curl toward each other, the way Julian tucks loose hair behind Kas’ ear, the way Kas sighs and smiles at Julian’s terrible puns. They live and breathe love for the other, and they have for years, and Kas hopes they will until they are both old and gray.

Kas leans his head on Julian’s chest, breathes in the familiar scent of soap and aftershave listens to the familiar heartbeat that nearly matches his own, and whispers a quiet “I love you so much” into his lover’s collarbone. 

***

They fall asleep like that, Kas half curled into Julian’s chest, Julian still holding Kas’ hand, and they fall asleep like that again, and again, and again in the years they live in that shitty apartment. Kas still cries from joy some nights, Julian still thinks he’s beautiful when he cries, they still love one another with tender moments and heartfelt actions. Even when they decide it’s time to move into a bigger apartment, then to a house that they fill with happy children, they still sometimes sit up late, holding each other in loving arms that have changed so much, gaining tattoos and freckles and scars, yet still remain perfect fits. Still crying, still breathing, hearts still beating as one.

They Experience the world together, and they fill the halls of their home with laughter and bright smiles, and another voice joins the two men, a smaller, more babbly one. Then another, and the two lovers learn to share their joyous love with their children.

Speaking of the joy in Kas’ heart, it never goes away. The thing simply blooms and blossoms and grows and wraps its vines around his soul, intertwining with those from Julian’s, spreading to hold and support the children, _his_ children. He smiles more with Julian and the kids, laughs louder, deeper, loves more willingly, more freely. Though when he was young Kas never thought of a family at the forefront of his future, he has never felt more happy holding his and Julian’s daughters, teaching them to dance and love and be loved.

***

They _do_ get old and gray together. Much too quickly for either of their liking, they grow up, and they watch as their children grow up, start lives of their own. They both cry more as they realize how long they’ve been together. They hold one another more as their bones start to creak and their knees begin to wobble.

There is a moment near the end of a person’s life, when they begin to question if they are ready to be done with living yet. In that moment they remember (if they can) the moments they’d change, the ones they regret, the ones they still haven’t gotten around to. For Julian and Kas, this moment is brief, and filled less with regrets, but more with looking to the future.

“I think I’ve loved you before,” Julian begins, on a day where their joints are stiff and they have to help one another out of bed. Kas looks at him, a confused look on his wrinkled face. “Before what?” He asks, and winces at the weak warble that comes through in his voice.

Julian takes Kas’ face in his hands, kisses his eyelids, “Before you were you. And before I was me. Do you think that love can last beyond…” He gestures vaguely, “Beyond life? Death? Or something like that.”

This question catches Kas off guard, and he chuckles a little. “Like reincarnation?” He asks, and barks out a laugh as Julian’s eyes light up. “That’s the word! Like I have so much love in my soul for you that it can’t be from just the one life. Like I’ve loved you from the beginning of time and I’ll love you until the end of everything.”

If it weren’t Julian, of course, Kas would laugh this off like it was a bad pick up line. But since it is Julian, and he can see the shine in his eyes, and the high energy of his smile, and the way his face is completely lit up by the thought of them being some eternal lovers or something… Kas can’t just laugh off this one. This one he actually almost believes. 

“In that case,” Kas begins slowly, the metaphorical cogs in his mind turning at such a high speed Julian can swear he can hear them, “The next life we get together, I want you to promise me you’ll still call me sunshine.”

Julian pulls Kas into a kiss and smiles at him. “I promise.”

***

The day of Julian’s funeral is dark, the smell of rain is nearly tangible in the muggy June air. A summer storm passed the night before and heavy clouds still struggle to make their way out of the sky. The service was lovely, of course, their entire family seemed to have shown up to say goodbye. Cousins upon cousins of Julian’s, all weeping and reminiscing on things he’d done for them, with them. Their friends are there, offering consoling hugs, kind smiles, teary eyes. Their daughters are there of course, one very pregnant, the other tugging around a seven year old by one hand and a weepy partner by the other. It nearly makes Kas smile seeing the girls able to bring love into the world just as he and Julian had taught them to. 

Of course, it is hard to smile when you have lost someone so ingrained in your life. Like losing a limb, where sometimes you forget, and still feel it there. At a point near the end of the service, after most of the attendees had paid their respects and wandered back to their vehicles, Kas finds himself alone by the grave. He places a hand on the polished granite, takes a painful knee to rest his forehead against it’s cold surface. 

“Remember,” His voice breaks into a sob as he tries to choke out the words, “Call me sunshine next time, so I know it’s you, Julian. I love you, forever and always.”

He sighs and stands up, using the gravestone to help himself to his feet, and looks up at the rain clouds overhead. So ill fitting, he thinks, for Julian to be put to rest in the gloom, when he was such a light in so many folks’ lives. Kas wipes the tears from his eyes and looks once more at the grave below him before turning to walk back to his car.

When he turns around, for a brief moment the clouds in the sky seem to part in a perfect circle. A beam of radiant sunlight hits Kas in the back of the head. With his charcoal hair gone silvery white with age, it would look to any passersby as if he were an angel, backlit by a halo resonating holy purifying light. He stops in his tracks as he feels his head get warmer, and turns to look up again into the perfect circle through the clouds, and for a moment it almost seems like a figure is there, hiding in the clouds, smiling down a beam of sunshine. 

Now… Kas thinks he believes Julian’s reincarnation theory after all.


End file.
